Essays of Benjamin Franklin

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Monograph

Identifikator:: 1752429486

URN:: urn:nbn:de:zbw-retromon-127700

Document type:: Monograph

Author:: Franklin, Benjamin http://d-nb.info/gnd/118534912

Title:: Essays of Benjamin Franklin

Place of publication:: New York

Publisher:: G. P. Putnam's Sons

Year of publication:: 1927

Scope:: xi, 273 Seiten

Digitisation:: 2021

Collection:: Economics Books

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Document type:: Monograph

Structure type:: Chapter

Title:: XXX. To Bejamin Vaughan

Collection:: Economics Books

2c" Benjamin Franklin [1755 slave, ordered him immediately to be hung up by the legs,and to receive a hundred blows of a cudgel onthe soles of his feet, that the severe sense of the punish- ment, and fear of incurring it thereafter, might pre- vent the faults that should merit it. Our author, himself, would hardly approve entirely of this Turk’s conduct in the government of slaves; and yet he appears to recommend something like it for the government of English subjects, when he applauds (p. 105) the reply of Judge Burnet to the convict horse-stealer, who, being asked what he had to say why judgment of death should not pass against him, and answering, that it was hard to hang a man for only stealing a horse, was told by the judge: ‘Man, thou are not to be hanged only for stealing a horse, but that horses may not be stolen.” The man’s answer, if candidly examined, will, I imagine, appear reasonable, as being founded on the eternal principle of justice and equity, that punish- ments should be proportioned to offences; and the judge’s reply brutal and unreasonable, though the writer “wishes all judges to carry it with them whenever they go the circuit, and to bear it in their minds as containing a wise reason for all the penal statutes which they are called upon to put in execu- tion. It at once illustrates,” says he, ‘‘the true grounds and reasons of all capital punishments what- soever, namely, that every man’s property, as well as his life, may be held sacred and inviolate.” Is there then no difference in value between property and life? If I think it right that the crime of murder 0

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